abaco-html4: html(2) wiring, UTF-8 default, cookies, and bug fixes for the 9legacy abaco browser
Ten patches that bring the 9legacy abaco(1) web browser to a more
usable state on the modern web, without rewriting it. The patches
fix NOTES-listed bugs in text selection and double-clicking, wire
up html(2) parser fields abaco ignored, flip the default character
set to UTF-8, enable webfs cookie storage so logged-in sites work,
mark failed fetches distinctly from in-flight ones in the status
area, and guard getbase against the relative-BASE-href crash.
The set is intentionally narrow: no new subsystems, no parser
replacement, no reflow layer. Everything builds on what abaco and
libhtml already ship.
CHANGES
v1 -- 2026-04-24 (initial)
abaco-html2-wiring Wire html(2) fields
parsehtml already fills
but abaco ignores: hr
attrs, image placeholders,
select defaults, maxlength,
form-field percent-encoding,
fragment anchors, link
titles in status, hanging
list indent, row
backgrounds, cell valign,
table captions, image
maps, frame borders/margins,
meta refresh.
abaco-doubleclick-typo text.c:727 one-char fix in
textclickmatch call; fixes
bracket/quote matching.
abaco-pagedoubleclick-guard page.c:595 nil guard on
l->next; fixes crash on
double-click past the last
line of the last page.
abaco-pageselect-ordering page.c:541 same-line drag
ordering via linewhich;
fixes "complement selection"
under 1-2 px mouse-Y wobble.
abaco-wind-dangling-edit wind.c:39 delete copy-paste
leftover fragment. No
behaviour change.
abaco-util-strcpy-bound util.c:956 strcpy -> snprint;
defensive tightening
against oversized -t flag.
abaco-charset-utf8-default main.c:38 default fallback
charset flipped iso-8859-1
-> utf-8. -t flag still
overrides.
abaco-cookies-enable urls.c:93 enable webfs's
sendcookies/acceptcookies
per connection so RFC 6265
cookie jar works.
abaco-error-surface-prefix page.c:276,296 prefix
failure-path messages with
"error: " to distinguish
from in-flight status.
v2 -- 2026-04-25
abaco-base-href-guard util.c:366 validurl-guard
p->doc->base in getbase;
falls through to the page
URL when BASE href is
relative or nil. Stops
crash on pages that set
<BASE HREF="/foo">
(libhtml's aurlval stores
the relative value
unresolved; the proper
fix is in libhtml).
v3 -- 2026-05-04 (ASCII normalization)
all patches + README Em-dash, arrow, and section-sign
characters replaced with '--',
'->', and 'Section N' for 9legacy
stable convention. Prose and
comments throughout, plus one
user-visible change in
abaco-html2-wiring: the button-2
status-bar separator between URL
and link title attribute is now
'--' instead of em-dash. Two
U+FFFD bytes remain in
abaco-pageselect-ordering on a
context line that mirrors
upstream NOTES; a follow-on NOTES
patch will clear them.
Scope limits
- Bug fixes and low-risk wiring only. No new rendering
subsystems. No CSS support (beyond what html(2) already
parses), no JavaScript, no reflow. abaco's single-pass
Lay / Box / Line layout is preserved.
- Modern HTTPS interop is delegated to the tls-1.2
patch series. These abaco patches assume tls-1.2
is already applied if HTTPS is a requirement.
- No change to webfs, libsec, or the /mnt/web file interface.
abaco-cookies-enable uses webfs's existing cookie machinery;
it does not add a new ABI.
RFCs in scope
RFC 3629 abaco-charset-utf8-default
RFC 6265 Section 5.3, Section 5.4 abaco-cookies-enable
Files
abaco-html2-wiring.diff html(2) field wiring
abaco-doubleclick-typo.diff text.c bracket/quote typo
abaco-pagedoubleclick-guard.diff page.c nil-deref guard
abaco-pageselect-ordering.diff page.c same-line ordering
abaco-wind-dangling-edit.diff wind.c cleanup
abaco-util-strcpy-bound.diff util.c strcpy bound
abaco-charset-utf8-default.diff main.c utf-8 default
abaco-cookies-enable.diff urls.c webfs cookie flags
abaco-error-surface-prefix.diff page.c error: prefix
abaco-base-href-guard.diff util.c relative-BASE guard
Apply order
The patches are independent (order does not affect result) but
presented in the order above for readability. Inside the VM,
from /:
cd /
patches=(abaco-html2-wiring abaco-doubleclick-typo \
abaco-pagedoubleclick-guard abaco-pageselect-ordering \
abaco-wind-dangling-edit abaco-util-strcpy-bound \
abaco-charset-utf8-default abaco-cookies-enable \
abaco-error-surface-prefix abaco-base-href-guard)
for(p in $patches)
ape/patch -p0 < /path/to/abaco-html4/$p.diff
Applying all ten leaves a page.c.orig behind. Four of these
patches touch page.c, and abaco-html2-wiring adds thirty lines
above the others' targets, so abaco-pagedoubleclick-guard lands
thirty lines lower than its header says. patch finds it by
context, applies it correctly, and keeps a backup; ape/patch and
patch both stay quiet about the offset unless run verbosely.
The result is the same whatever the order, as above. Remove the
.orig after building, and after backing out -- reverting offsets
the same way and keeps its own backups.
Rebuild
Patches touch sys/src/cmd/abaco/{html.c, main.c, page.c, tabs.c,
text.c, urls.c, util.c, wind.c, NOTES} only. No libhtml change,
no kernel change, no reboot.
cd /sys/src/cmd/abaco && mk clean && mk install
New /$cputype/bin/abaco; run it.
Prerequisites
A 9legacy CD / source tree (the canonical 9legacy.iso or an
install therefrom) has everything needed. Sanity-check:
test -d /sys/src/cmd/abaco # abaco source present
test -d /sys/src/libhtml # libhtml source present
For HTTPS interop, apply tls-1.2 first (see
contrib/tls-1.2/ and <https://9p.io/sources/contrib/
mospak/tls-1.2/>). These abaco patches do not depend
on tls-1.2 for HTTP pages; HTTPS is only relevant for
the subset of test pages served over TLS.
Verification
For the bugfix patches (doubleclick-typo, pagedoubleclick-guard,
pageselect-ordering) interactive testing in rio is the acceptance
gate.
Real-hardware smoke suggestions:
abaco http://example.com/ trivial baseline
abaco http://9legacy.org/ plain-HTML site
abaco https://9legacy.org/ HTTPS (needs tls-1.2)
Rollback
Reverse order, -R flag:
cd /
rpatches=(abaco-base-href-guard abaco-error-surface-prefix \
abaco-cookies-enable abaco-charset-utf8-default \
abaco-util-strcpy-bound abaco-wind-dangling-edit \
abaco-pageselect-ordering abaco-pagedoubleclick-guard \
abaco-doubleclick-typo abaco-html2-wiring)
for(p in $rpatches)
ape/patch -R -p0 < /path/to/abaco-html4/$p.diff
Then rebuild libhtml and abaco as above.
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